Let’s be honest. Stress has become a word we use for almost everything.
“I’m stressed.”
“Work is stressing me out.”
“I just need to relax.”
But stress is much more than simply feeling busy, overwhelmed or mentally exhausted.
Your body has a real physiological response to stress. Your brain, nervous system, hormones and other systems throughout your body are involved.
When stress continues for long periods, you may begin to notice it in ways you never connected with stress at all.
Stress Isn’t Just a Feeling
When your brain perceives a challenge or threat, your body responds.
The sympathetic nervous system plays an important role in this response. For example, it helps prepare your body for action and can influence your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure and alertness.
At the same time, your stress response involves hormones including cortisol and adrenaline.
This response is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, short term stress is part of the way your body responds and adapts to challenges.
However, difficulties can arise when stress is prolonged or repeated. As a result, your body may have fewer opportunities to recover.
Over time, being constantly under pressure can affect the way you feel physically, mentally and emotionally.
What Can Ongoing Stress Feel Like?
Stress looks different for everyone.
For example, you may notice:
• Difficulty switching off
• Poor or disrupted sleep
• Feeling tired but wired
• Tight shoulders, neck or jaw
• Feeling more reactive or irritable
• Difficulty concentrating
• Feeling overwhelmed more easily
• Changes in appetite
• Digestive changes
• Headaches
• Feeling as though you are constantly switched on
These experiences can have many different causes. Therefore, they do not automatically mean stress is responsible.
However, when several happen together, stress may be one part of the bigger picture worth considering.
Relaxation and Stress Regulation Are Not Quite the Same Thing
Massage, meditation, sound therapy, Reiki, time in nature, exercise and breathwork can all help people feel relaxed.
However, I do not believe we need to dismiss one approach to explain the value of another.
Instead, a more useful question is:
What helps your body respond to stress and recover from it?
For some people, taking time to relax may be enough to help them reset.
For others, ongoing stress may occur alongside poor sleep, pain, lifestyle pressures, metabolic health concerns or emotional challenges.
This is why I prefer to look at the whole person rather than one isolated symptom.
The Nervous System and Stress
Your autonomic nervous system helps regulate many processes that happen without conscious effort.
Two important parts of this system are the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
For example, the sympathetic nervous system is often described as your fight or flight response. In contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system is commonly associated with rest and digestion.
This is a useful way to understand the basics. However, the nervous system is much more complex than simply being switched on or switched off.
What matters is your body’s ability to respond when needed and then recover afterwards.
Therefore, when someone has experienced prolonged stress, I am interested in the bigger pattern.
What has their body been responding to? How long has it been happening? What else may be contributing?
Where Does Spinal Flow Fit?
Spinal Flow Technique™ is one of the approaches I use as part of my nervous system focused wellbeing work.
It uses gentle contact at specific areas along the spine while you remain fully clothed.
There is no cracking.
There is no manipulation.
There is no force.
For me, Spinal Flow is not about promising to remove every source of stress from someone’s life.
Life will always contain challenges.
Instead, it forms part of my broader approach to understanding the body, the nervous system and the different stressors a person may be experiencing.
Stress Is Not Always Emotional
Stress is not always emotional.
For example, your body also responds to physical and everyday pressures. Poor sleep, pain, illness, demanding workloads and major life events can all affect how you feel.
This is why I look at the whole person.
Rather than immediately asking:
“How do we get rid of this symptom?”
I prefer to ask:
“What has your body been responding and adapting to?”
As a result, that question can open a very different conversation.
Supporting the Whole Person
At Purposeful Life, I look beyond one symptom or one area of wellbeing.
Depending on what you are experiencing, my work may include:
Spinal Flow Technique™
A gentle, light touch approach used within my nervous system focused wellbeing work.
Breathwork
Practical breathing techniques that can support relaxation and self regulation.
NLP Coaching
Exploring thoughts, beliefs, behaviours and patterns that may be contributing to ongoing stress.
Metabolic Health Education
Looking at nutrition, lifestyle, insulin resistance and metabolic wellbeing where these may be relevant.
PEMF and Terahertz
Complementary wellness modalities used as part of my cellular health approach.
Importantly, it is not about using every modality.
It is about understanding you first and considering what may be an appropriate place to begin.
Stress and Nervous System Support in Adelaide and the Barossa Valley
I work with clients from two South Australian locations:
Abergeldie House, Glen Osmond
Williamstown, Barossa Valley
If you have been feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, unable to switch off or simply do not feel like yourself anymore, you do not need to work out which service you need before contacting me.
Ready to Take the First Step?
Learn more about Spinal Flow Technique™ and my approach to nervous system wellbeing, or contact me if you are unsure where to begin.
Contact Marg to make an inquiry https://purposefullife.com.au/spinal-flow-technique/